Input keyboards are well known to those skilled in the art. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 4,615,629 of Daniel Power describes a keyboard which allows entry by a user with only one hand. At column 1 of this patent, it is disclosed that "Alphabetical keyboard arrangements . . . can potentially facilitate the use of keyboards by non-typists, but the obvious alphabeticval arrangement of the letter keys . . . has been found to be almost as difficult to use and learn as the QWERTY design. In this regard, it appears this obvious alphabetic design neglects important facts as to how humans process information . . . ."
The Power patent also discusses prior art U.S. Pat. No. 4,180,337 of Otey et al. and notes that, with regard to the Otey keyboard, ". . . placing six keys in a row requires awkward lateral-hand movements and encourages people to use four or five digits of the hand, resulting in weak and awkward thumb and fourth finger movements."
Despite the stated disadvantages of the alphabetic keyboard, Power discloses and claims an alphabetic keyboard. Although his keyboard arguably is better than the keyboards of the prior art, it still suffers from many disadvantages. The Power keyboard, with its many keys and the manner in which they are arranged, places excessive demands upon the user to learn and operate the keyboard. Furthermore, the use of the alphabetic arrangement is still ". . . almost as difficult to use and learn as the QWERTY design."
It is an object of this invention to provide a keyboard which can easily be learned and used by a typist.
It is another object of this invention to provide a keyboard which can be operated by a typist with only one hand.